I recently had to buy a new TV so I picked up an Insignia 43″ 4K Roku TV on sale from Best Buy. I noticed right away that the screen had a serious problem. Any patch of black or near-black had hard blocky green sections mixed in, like it was calculating that the green was close enough to black to be equivalent. Thankfully I stumbled across a fix. But first, here’s an example:

Notice the ugly effect on the walls on the right hand side. It’s even more noticeable in motion because the green blocks move frequently.

I tried to adjust the color settings in the Advanced Picture Settings however all I was able to do was to darken the picture to make it less noticeable. Not ideal.

While I was trying to find anyone talking about it online, I stumbled across a post from Roku saying that you could access advanced video settings in an iPhone app. I played around with it and found something handy: changing just one of the white balance settings immediately fixes the green blocking problem. The picture looks so much better.

So here’s how to fix it:

Download the Roku Mobile App on your phone and make sure you’re on the same network as the TV.

Go to Expert Picture Settings in the app.

Pause a video on your TV which shows the effect of the green blocking (so you’ll be able to confirm the results).

Under the heading 11 Pt WB, click on the green/center column in the 5% row.

Click on the minus button once, changing the value to -1. You’ll notice that the video immediately changes and the shadows are much more accurate.

Now your Insignia 43″ 4K Roku TV is fixed! Note that if you change the color options on the TV directly, you’ll need to go back into the app and make the change again to fix the issue.

I had the chance to use a more sophisticated shipping setup for the latest round of Broadway Pins, and I needed a way to easily export my orders from WooCommerce into Stamps.com. I didn’t really want to sync them up through the store integrations – that seemed like overkill – but I just wanted to be able to export a CSV of the latest orders in the format Stamps.com accepts.

I’m happy to watch almost any type of movie. From brilliant to B-movie (or Bee Movie), classic to cash cow. Occasionally I stumble across a movie that I love but was previously unknown to me. Here’s my subjective, growing list of those films, and why I think they’re worth your time.

The Paper (1994)

Directed by Ron Howard, starring Michael Keaton, Robert Duvall, Glenn Close, Marisa Tomei (as well as Jason Alexander, Lynne Thigpen, Catherine O’Hara all wonderful in smaller roles). This fast-paced film is 24 hours in the life of an overworked editor at a New York tabloid newspaper. Michael Keaton is terrific and funny as his character tries to keep a dozen balls in the air. 88% on Rotten Tomatoes. It’s on iTunes.

Wait Until Dark (1967)

Audrey Hepburn stars as a blind woman who is conned and terrorised by men trying to steal a doll full of drugs. It’s based on a play which has starred Lee Remick, Honor Blackman and Marisa Tomei. It features a wonderfully out-of-tune score by Henry Mancini. 95% on Rotten Tomatoes. It’s on iTunes.

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974)

I love a caper film, and this is one of the best. Robert Shaw leads a team including Martin Balsam as they steal a New York subway train. Their plan seems unclear but Walter Matthau and Jerry Stiller try to work it out from the subway control room. A brilliant serialist score by David Shire absolutely nails ’70s New York. 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. It’s on iTunes

36 Hours (1965)

War films aren’t my favourite, but this is more of a spy thriller like a good episode of Mission: Impossible. It’s WWII and a German doctor comes up with a scheme to trick an American officer that the war is over to give up some crucial intelligence. It’s based on a short story by Roald Dahl and stars James Garner, Eva Marie Saint and Rod Taylor. I love the piano heavy score by Dimitri Tiomkin. Available on Amazon Video.

Victor/Victoria (1983)

Julie Andrews pretending to be a drag queen, helped by Robert Preston playing her gay bestie with great sensitivity. This film is so full of heart and sadness that it’s shocking it is so under appreciated. James Garner and Lesley Ann Warren are also terrific. Songs by Henry Mancini. I believe this is one of Blake Edwards’ best film. 96% on Rotten Tomatoes. Available on iTunes.

Anatomy of a Murder (1959)

I love a movie that feels hot, and I love a courtroom drama, and this is both. Led by James Stewart, Lee Remick and Ben Gazzara, this film deals with a rape case with surprising maturity and weight considering its age. James Stewart is never better than in this film. The jazz score is by Duke Ellington who also appears in the film. 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. Available on iTunes.

Sometimes a small pleasure grows into a great joy when you least expect it.

Earlier this year I was perusing Etsy looking at all the amazing, cute enamel pins people across the world have designed. These pins tap into niche pop culture artefacts (The Golden Girls, Beetlejuice, Mad Monster Party) to provide a relatively cheap way to show off your pop culture knowledge. They’re also a great conversation starter with people, even if they don’t know who or what the pin is.

It was odd, though, that I couldn’t find any theatre-themed pins. Well that’s a gap I could fill. You know, with my lack of drawing ability, and no knowledge of how to make these pins. Ideal fit, really.

I worked on my first sketch, a pin of Stephen Sondheim. I pretty much fluked the first design; it was, in my opinion, unmistakably Stephen Sondheim. What a case of beginner’s luck.

I tracked down a pin manufacturer in the States. The unit cost seemed reasonable – I could make a small profit on each pin – so it seemed possible. The total cost for 100 pins was low enough that I could take a risk and even if I sold a handful I wouldn’t be losing too much money; it would have just been a fun exercise. I ordered 100 pins and about a month later a box arrived from China. I was pleasantly surprised – they turned out so cute.

In the meantime I had built an eCommerce website for the pins (finally using a skill I actually had) and was ready to tell the world. I guessed the shipping costs, took some photos of the pins, sent out a tweet and went to bed. While I slept, things were going crazy. People were talking about the pin, sharing it and offering a lot of kind words. Orders started were flooding in. In 36 hours I had completely sold out, all 100 pins. I was blown away. I had a lot of packing to do.

It took me a few evenings to pack all of the pins, a process made longer by the decision to hand write a note on each of the original orders. I took them to the post office in one batch, and spent hours filling out customs forms until my hands ached. Thankfully now I’ve streamlined the processes with a stamp and doing all the paperwork at home, and have formed close, lifelong friends and nemeses with the various postal workers.

I now have 7 different pin designs available with more in the works. I’ll be restocking Lin Manuel Miranda and Stephen Sondheim (the latter for the second time) in the new year. I’m also using a different, cheaper supplier, cutting out the middle-man. Three cheers for globalism and the Internet.

What surprised me when talking to people about it was that they seemed to be taking it a lot more seriously than I was. People described it as a “venture”, a “business” when I thought of it more like a fun little project. That’s a large part of the joy for me (I haven’t even minded going to the post office almost every second day); it was something that grew out of fun to become a tidy little business. I love seeing the photos people send of themselves wearing the pins, and it was a thrill to end up on the 2016 Playbill Holiday Gift Guide this year. Sure, it won’t last forever, but while it does I’m going to enjoy it and take the chance to give a little too. In an effort to say “thank you for your support”, I’ve donated $1000 USD to Broadway Cares/Equity Fights Aids. Thank you, truly.

Amongst the smog of global disaster that clouded 2016, I was bestowed with a disproportionate number of delights and true joys. Broadway Pins has been one of those for me, and please know that I am extremely grateful for your support, attention and passing on your well-wishes. I am genuinely delighted by you. If you’d like to hear more, there’s a mailing list sign-up on the Broadway Pins website where I’ll announce new designs in the works for the new year. Lastly, I’ll be in New York myself at the end of February if you’d like to have a coffee and talk theatre. I’ll try to bring as many pins as my bag can fit!

My CD collection was becoming a bit unruly, particularly after gratefully accepting the donation of a few hundred discs from a friend’s collection. I had already outgrown the CD towers I had hastily bought from Officeworks when they stopped making them so it was time for some more efficient shelving. Now don’t drag me for still buying and keeping CDs, often it’s the only way to properly financially support the artists so new recordings can remain financially viable. Also, classic releases are often dumped at incredibly low prices so it’s easy to fill gaps in classical and jazz libraries… but I digress.

This apartment doesn’t have an enormous amount of wall space owing to the many windows, but I did keep an area clean for shelving for my CDs. Inspired by this fellow Melbournian’s impressive CD collection, I looked wanted to do something a bit more humble albeit just as space-saving.

I looked into a bunch of shelving options including floating and steel, but ended up going with simple, store-bought track shelving. I wasn’t sure if it was going to look messy (I removed the same shelving from the first apartment I rented because I hated it), but I looked up some examples and saw that it can indeed be attractive. It was also going to provide flexibility as my needs grow (or shrink) and was cheap. All boxes ticked.

I popped out to Bunnings looking for something else and came home with four 1.6m double tracks (the bits that screw onto the wall). Carrying those home on the tram was fun. This was basically me:

I sourced the brackets from The Shelving Shop online and had them posted to me as Bunnings didn’t have enough stock. I have four spares just in case I need to squeeze in another shelf at some point.

Finally, I chose simple 12mm thick MDF for the eight shelves themselves. Allboard Distributors took care of me here. I just emailed them what I was after (2 meters by 142mm) and they cut the wood and delivered it to my building. They even suggested a change that would save me some money (ordering 8 instead of 9 shelves would save me the cost of a whole board of MDF). It took about a week for my job to come up but then they threw it on a truck and got it out to me. I guess they’re used to dealing with fit builders so the delivery guy just pointed to the wood on the truck when he arrived and I had to wrangle it off. I could handle eight. Nine might have done me in.

I used a stud finder to try to align the tracks up with the studs (essential unless you’re using plasterboard anchors), but the stud finder reported the whole wall as being a stud. This is a bit of a mystery to me, but I can only assume that there’s an additional wood panelling behind the plasterboard on this wall as it’s a wall that adjoins another apartment. In short, I don’t really know what I was screwing into behind there, but it seems totally sturdy. I’d love to know exactly what is in there. Bodies, maybe? Bags of old cash? A hidden room with someone else’s shelving that I’ve just screwed into?

I had planned to prime and paint the shelves in Lexicon Quarter to match the walls but I didn’t mind the look of the raw MDF. I still might paint them, but I’ve kinda had enough of painting recently.

One of the most exciting things about moving into my own apartment is that a lot of the restrictions of renting no longer apply. It’s quite possible that I could get a pet – a little dog perhaps – to mess up my floors and slobber on the couch. I considered it, however I’m not sure I can take on the responsibility of taking the pup for a walk each day, particularly when there aren’t any off-the-leash parks nearby and some days my very objective is to avoid leaving my apartment.

Don’t get too sad for me, however, because I’ve found a perfect substitute, and one that wont’t mess up my floors. In fact, just the opposite! I am the now proud parent of a baby robot vacuum player. Introducing to the world: J. Edgar Roomba!

When he first got home he mostly hid under my shelves and under my bed, but eventually started to explore his surroundings. Before long he was doing laps up and down the hallway banging into the skirting board at every opportunity. About 90 minutes later he coughed up a furball and went to bed. It was quite the productive first day.

It’s fair to say there were a few teething problems. I hadn’t Roomba-readied my apartment, so anything on the ground posed a danger to the Roomba, or more accurately in reverse. A stack of new picture frames from IKEA learning up against a wall came down in a crash as the Roomba slammed into them. Thankfully none of them broke. Less lucky was the large ceramic wrap-around pipe cover for my bathroom basin. I had removed it to get access to the pipes and placed it on the bathroom floor. The Roomba hit it and it toppled and smashed on the tiles. The cheeky bugger then just stayed there and circled around in its own mess. Toddlers, eh?

Certain incidents aside, he’s doing a great job. This particular Australian model can’t be scheduled (otherwise it’s the same as the American model), so I have to manually start it. That’s not so bad, because I usually have to keep an eye on it to make sure it doesn’t get itself trapped somehow (which occasionally happens). It does have the programmable interface, but that’s pretty advanced. I don’t need a HAL-style situation here. And although he won’t touch my thick rug (carpet would probably be fine), he climbs the lip up to my bathroom quite easily.

They grow up so fast. He’s currently whipping around and butting into all of my furniture with such confidence, collecting dust from places my vacuum would never venture (ie. everywhere). Now I just need one that will dust on top of things, clean my bathroom, maybe do a little cooking and every now and then tell me a story.